eBay - Refurbished Hitachi Ultrastar 2 TB $30 - Free 2 Day USPS Priority

Odellus said:
just so you know what you're buying. these are high quality enterprise level drives with an outstanding track record.
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You are actually getting the exact opposite. These are all refurbished by the manufacturer, these particular drives do not have an outstanding track record as they have failed once already. That said I have a refurb 2tb hitachi that has been going fine for years now, so you may be fine picking these up.
 
munkle said:
You are actually getting the exact opposite. These are all refurbished by the manufacturer, these particular drives do not have an outstanding track record as they have failed once already. That said I have a refurb 2tb hitachi that has been going fine for years now, so you may be fine picking these up.
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every seller on newegg that sells this particular drive refurbished has 4 stars with dozens of reviews. it being refurbished doesn't mean it failed. these are most likely pulled drives from server farms. it would explain why they have such a ridiculous amount of stock. also, every time this deal gets posted someone chimes in saying that they used these drives in servers at their workplace and either had none fail or very, very few.
 
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I might bite on 3 or 4 of these for some mass storage. I've got too many other smaller drives with stuff on them. Plus I want to rip all of my DVD/BluRays. This would be a good start.
 
munkle said:
You are actually getting the exact opposite. These are all refurbished by the manufacturer, these particular drives do not have an outstanding track record as they have failed once already. That said I have a refurb 2tb hitachi that has been going fine for years now, so you may be fine picking these up.
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You don't know what you're talking about. These "refurbished" drives are not drives that have failed and repaired, they are drives decommissioned from servers and verified working with no errors. The cost of replacing the logic board is higher than what these are selling at I believe, and that would erase SMART data, and it doesn't make sense to repair the platters at all.
 
Tsumi said:
You don't know what you're talking about.
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Did you look at the auction? It specifically states:

Item condition:
Manufacturer refurbished
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Either you or I don't understand basic english but I think when I say:
These are all refurbished by the manufacturer, these particular drives do not have an outstanding track record as they have failed once already.
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that is more in line with the above quote from the auction than when you say:

These "refurbished" drives are not drives that have failed and repaired, they are drives decommissioned from servers and verified working with no errors. The cost of replacing the logic board is higher than what these are selling at I believe, and that would erase SMART data, and it doesn't make sense to repair the platters at all.
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Generally I see server pulls listed as used or seller refurbished. If they are manufacturer refurbs then they were sent back to be repaired. No one pulls working drives to send back to the manufacturer.
 
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munkle said:
Did you look at the auction? It specifically states:



Either you or I don't understand basic english but I think when I say:


that is more in line with the above quote from the auction than when you say:
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Refurbishment (electronics) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The main difference between "refurbished" and "used" products is that refurbished products have been tested and verified to function properly, and are thus free of defects, while "used" products may or may not be defective. Refurbished products may be unused customer returns that are essentially "new" items, or they may be defective products that were returned under warranty, and resold by the manufacturer after repairing the defects and ensuring proper function.[1]

Other types of products that may be sold as "refurbished" include:

Items used in field tests, sales displays or demonstrations[1]
Items returned for reasons other than defect and tested by the manufacturer[1]
Items returned to the manufacturer because the box or item was damaged in shipping[1]
Previously leased units that are turned in and resold after the lease ends[2]
Used electronics that have been turned in to an electronic recycling program[3]
Used items that have been donated to a charity or non-profit organization[3]
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A hard drive from a server pull most likely falls under one of those three conditions, none of which indicate a defect or failure.
 
Field tests and donations to charity wouldn't be the large volume here. Leasing doesn't apply, nobody leases hard drives. I seriously doubt recycling applies, the manufacturer isn't going to test a bunch of recycled drives, they are going use them for the materials (which I doubt they would even be handling that, they would probably leave that up to a 3rd party to separate them into the raw materials). That leaves returned for reasons other than defect, which yes that could be possible some were returned for reasons other than defect. But with the large amount of drives available, I'm fairly positive these are repaired drives. Like I said before nobody pulls working drives and returns them to the manufacturer who will then refurbish them.
 
Tsumi said:
Nobody? You severely underestimate the waste of large corporations.
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Do you have an example of a hard drive manufacturer doing any of the above? If not then I think we can go with a logical assumption.

The 2 likely scenarios in this case are:

1. mistake on the sellers part and these aren't manufacturer refurbished but just used or seller refurbished drives

2. they are repaired drives

As I said before I have had a refurbished 2tb hitachi for a while with no problems so you could be fine, but don't kid yourself if you think you aren't getting a repaired drive. Hitachi could be past the point where they have to support large amounts of new drives of this model under warranty and they sold off all their stock of repaired drives. It's a pretty simple concept, heres an example: you sell a drive with 3 year warranty, you stopped selling that drive 4 years ago, most of the drives are out of warranty so any stock of drives you use for warranty purposes you no longer need to hold for warranty purposes and you sell them off (most of the drives used for warranty purposes are refurbished drives, you get a bad drive from a customer, you send them a refurb, you fix their drive and send it to the next person who has a bad drive). The drives used here are going to be repairs from ones that people sent in.

I think that is going on here or seller made a mistake and these aren't manufacturer refurbished.
 
Logical assumption? There is nothing financially logical about repairing and selling these drives at these prices. There have been SD members who contact the seller directly and buy in bulk at about $20 each. Factor in shipping, are you going to seriously make the claim that they are able to repair these drives for less than $15 each? Just swapping the controller will take around 30 minutes, is the guy doing the swap making less than $20 an hour, assuming the controller board somehow costs less than $10?

More likely large corporations send it back so as to not have to deal with electronic waste disposal, the manufacturer tasks a guy to run SMART tests, probably at least 10 drives an hour, and then sell the good ones for a small profit and recycle the rest. It is a business. The numbers have to add up.
 
Tsumi said:
Logical assumption? There is nothing financially logical about repairing and selling these drives at these prices. There have been SD members who contact the seller directly and buy in bulk at about $20 each. Factor in shipping, are you going to seriously make the claim that they are able to repair these drives for less than $15 each? Just swapping the controller will take around 30 minutes, is the guy doing the swap making less than $20 an hour, assuming the controller board somehow costs less than $10?

More likely large corporations send it back so as to not have to deal with electronic waste disposal, the manufacturer tasks a guy to run SMART tests, probably at least 10 drives an hour, and then sell it for a small profit. It is a business. The numbers have to add up.
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Lets do some math then. Lets say a control board costs $5 (the cost doesn't really matter for this example), a new hard drive costs $5 for the logic board plus what ever the rest of the drive costs. Your drive fails, you send it in for warranty. The manufacturer can either replace the drive with a new drive or refurb (they usually do refurb). They send a refurb drive to you, and now they have yours which is bad. What should they do? Should they throw it away? Or should they repair it for $5 so that they don't have to send a new drive to another person who has a bad drive? Sounds like repairing it is a better option.

You seem to think I'm saying these were recently repaired... I am not. These very well could be old drives sitting in a warehouse and they were repaired when the drives were being sold as new. Now that they don't need to be held for warranty purposes they are being sold off. When these were actively sold as new drives they were not sub $100 drives, its much cheaper to repair than replace with a new drive. Hitachi wouldn't, today, take a bunch of bad drives that are years old and out of warranty and repair them, which to me seems like what you think I am saying.

I know of no company that sends working drives back to a manufacturer. When I did IT we sent them (hard drives) to a 3rd party to be recycled or destroyed. The 3rd party either refurbished them and sold them or they destroyed them, they did not send them back to the manufacturer. It costs money to ship things around, nobody wants to pay to ship things back the manufacturer if they don't need to. My real world experience doesn't line up with what you think is happening at all.
 
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This is probably how it works.
Customer orders servers under a 3 year lease. Hardware Vendor orders x amount of drives from drive manufacturer. When lease is up, Hardware vendor pulls the servers, then pulls all of the drives and sends them back to manufacturer.
Manufacturer goes through the drives, ones that pass are boxed up and wholesaled, the ones with head or platter issues have the control boards removed and the drive is shredded then recycled. They may even recycle the ones with bad boards instead of swapping the board.
 
Zepher said:
This is probably how it works.
Customer orders servers under a 3 year lease. Hardware Vendor orders x amount of drives from drive manufacturer. When lease is up, Hardware vendor pulls the servers, then pulls all of the drives and sends them back to manufacturer.
Manufacturer goes through the drives, ones that pass are boxed up and wholesaled, the ones with head or platter issues have the control boards removed and the drive is shredded then recycled. They may even recycle the ones with bad boards instead of swapping the board.
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Highly doubtful, like I said before no wants to pay to ship around drives that they don't need to ship around, they aren't going to pay the manufacturer to test them and the manufacturer isn't going to do it for free. They didn't lease the drives from the manufacturer either. It's not profitable to pay to ship to the manufacturer, pay to have them test it, then pay to ship them to client when they receive them back from the manufacturer. That just makes no sense at this price. If they are server pulls, they would just sell them off most likely untested as they came from a working server and if you got a bad one, they would just send you another as that is the cheapest way to do it.
 
munkle said:
Lets do some math then. Lets say a control board costs $5 (the cost doesn't really matter for this example), a new hard drive costs $5 for the logic board plus what ever the rest of the drive costs. Your drive fails, you send it in for warranty. The manufacturer can either replace the drive with a new drive or refurb (they usually do refurb). They send a refurb drive to you, and now they have yours which is bad. What should they do? Should they throw it away? Or should they repair it for $5 so that they don't have to send a new drive to another person who has a bad drive? Sounds like repairing it is a better option.

You seem to think I'm saying these were recently repaired... I am not. These very well could be old drives sitting in a warehouse and they were repaired when the drives were being sold as new. Now that they don't need to be held for warranty purposes they are being sold off. When these were actively sold as new drives they were not sub $100 drives, its much cheaper to repair than replace with a new drive. Hitachi wouldn't, today, take a bunch of bad drives that are years old and out of warranty and repair them, which to me seems like what you think I am saying.

I know of no company that sends working drives back to a manufacturer. When I did IT we sent them (hard drives) to a 3rd party to be recycled or destroyed. The 3rd party either refurbished them and sold them or they destroyed them, they did not send them back to the manufacturer. It costs money to ship things around, nobody wants to pay to ship things back the manufacturer if they don't need to. My real world experience doesn't line up with what you think is happening at all.
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Does not explain the low number of power on counts and extremely high power on times that these drives have. If they were actually repaired, wouldn't you expect those counters to be reset, especially in the case of a new controller board? Again, the facts of these hard drives don't line up with the scenarios you're coming up with.
 
I don't have experience with the 2TB, but we use about 100 of the 4TB version in various disk clusters and NAS here at my office.

Great drives!!

The refurbs are typically not defective (according to my vendors, this is true). The SMART values pretty much confirm this.
 
Tsumi said:
Does not explain the low number of power on counts and extremely high power on times that these drives have. If they were actually repaired, wouldn't you expect those counters to be reset, especially in the case of a new controller board? Again, the facts of these hard drives don't line up with the scenarios you're coming up with.
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The refurb I got from hitachi did not have all its smart data reset (this was a warranty repair). I doesn't even make sense to reset everything blindly. If you repair a drive for what ever reason you still want to know how long the rest of the drive has been in operation so you wouldn't want to reset the power on count or hours. The facts of these hard drives line up way better with my scenarios than what you have come up with...

It makes absolutely zero sense to send working drives to a manufacturer. I gave you real world examples that happen all the time, I have never in my life heard of anyone leasing hard drives from a manufacturer or sending out of warranty working drives back to a manufacturer to be tested. Those just aren't real scenarios. If you think they are then I guess we are in a disagreement. Like I said there are really are only two options for these drives:

1. mistake on the sellers part and these aren't manufacturer refurbished but just used or seller refurbished drives

2. they are repaired drives
 
i saw these and almost bit to replace my 2tb seagate drives, but, theyre still clicking. no wait i mean ticking. i mean working. fuck i hate having seagate drives.
 
I ordered 2, what program do you use to check health and smart status for these drives? I need to do that as soon as I get them in. I hope none are bad.
 
15,703 units sold

I ordered one but i have a feeling some of us are going to wait for our refunds....

They have a couple of other deals here: refurbforless | eBay
 
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munkle said:
The refurb I got from hitachi did not have all its smart data reset (this was a warranty repair). I doesn't even make sense to reset everything blindly. If you repair a drive for what ever reason you still want to know how long the rest of the drive has been in operation so you wouldn't want to reset the power on count or hours. The facts of these hard drives line up way better with my scenarios than what you have come up with...

It makes absolutely zero sense to send working drives to a manufacturer. I gave you real world examples that happen all the time, I have never in my life heard of anyone leasing hard drives from a manufacturer or sending out of warranty working drives back to a manufacturer to be tested. Those just aren't real scenarios. If you think they are then I guess we are in a disagreement. Like I said there are really are only two options for these drives:

1. mistake on the sellers part and these aren't manufacturer refurbished but just used or seller refurbished drives

2. they are repaired drives
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Yeah normally I would agree with you, except I just got a job at a Data Center. And if someones lease is not up and they choose to upgrade to new hardware, everything is sent back to who they bought the equipment from.

Also when a lease is up, all equipment is sent back.

Hardware does get sent back to the manufacturer when it is done being used.
 
dbu8554 said:
Yeah normally I would agree with you, except I just got a job at a Data Center. And if someones lease is not up and they choose to upgrade to new hardware, everything is sent back to who they bought the equipment from.

Also when a lease is up, all equipment is sent back.

Hardware does get sent back to the manufacturer when it is done being used.
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Are you saying you pull the drive and send the drive to the hdd manufacturer and all the parts to their individual manufacturer? or that the server goes back to hp/dell/who ever?
 
I'm tempted to buy 4 of these and put them in my FreeNAS server. I NAS on a budget and always buy used drives for my array. I know its a little riskier going used, so I'll keep a closer eye on the volume status and I'm also considering buying one extra drive to throw in as a hot spare.
 
munkle said:
Are you saying you pull the drive and send the drive to the hdd manufacturer and all the parts to their individual manufacturer? or that the server goes back to hp/dell/who ever?
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Goes back to Dell/HP and then it gets sent back to manufacturer.
 
dbu8554 said:
Goes back to Dell/HP and then it gets sent back to manufacturer.
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How do you know they part it out and that the hdd goes back to the manufacturer once it reaches dell/hp? (Just never heard any off lease stuff going back to the manufacturer, its usually sold to a 3rd party by dell/hp or sold on some sort of site like dell's refurbished site/outlet as off lease or refurb)
 
munkle said:
How do you know they part it out and that the hdd goes back to the manufacturer once it reaches dell/hp? (Just never heard any off lease stuff going back to the manufacturer, its usually sold to a 3rd party by dell/hp or sold on some sort of site like dell's refurbished site/outlet as off lease or refurb)
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I just started here, but I just asked the Dell rep one day what do they do with the old stuff ( I wanted some for myself) and he said it goes back to Dell. He said it can be used still (not out of date) they go through it all and sell it.

If not they send back what they can to manufacturers.

But even one ONE HD goes bad. We replace it but we package that old one up and send it back. Everything goes back.
 
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